Hegseth Directs Bases to Let Troops Carry Personal Guns

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday he is signing a memo directing base commanders across the country to allow service members to carry privately owned firearms on military installations, citing the Second Amendment and a string of deadly shootings at domestic bases.

The directive instructs commanders to grant such requests "with the presumption that it is necessary for personal protection," Hegseth said in a video posted to X. Any denial must be explained in detail and in writing — a departure from decades of policy that generally barred personal weapons on base without explicit senior-commander approval.

For the tens of thousands of active-duty troops and their families stationed at Florida installations — including Patrick Space Force Base in Brevard County and Naval Air Station Jacksonville — the order represents a fundamental shift in the daily environment of base life. Florida is home to more than fifty thousand active-duty service members, many of whom commute to bases through Treasure Coast communities or have family ties in Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties.

"Effectively, our bases across the country were gun-free zones," Hegseth said. "Unless you're training or unless you are a military policeman, you couldn't carry, you couldn't bring your own firearm for your own personal protection onto post."

The existing policy, originally enacted under President George H.W. Bush, required troops to check personal firearms into secure storage and retrieve them only for sanctioned use at shooting ranges or hunting areas. Military police have typically been the only armed personnel on base outside those designated zones.

Hegseth pointed to recent incidents to justify the change, including a 2025 shooting at Fort Stewart, Georgia, in which an Army sergeant wounded five soldiers before fellow troops tackled and disarmed him.

Critics pushed back sharply. Tanya Schardt, senior counsel at the Brady gun violence prevention organization, argued the policy change will "undoubtedly" raise rates of gun suicide and other gun violence among troops, noting that most active-duty service members who die by suicide use personally owned firearms, not military-issued weapons. A Pentagon report released Tuesday found that while the total number of military suicides fell in 2024, the overall rate among active-duty troops has gradually increased since 2011.

"Our military installations are among the most guarded, protected properties in the world, and they've never been 'gun-free zones,'" Schardt said in a statement.

The memo takes effect immediately. Individual base commanders retain authority to implement the policy, meaning the pace and scope of change may vary by installation.

This article was generated with AI assistance using publicly available information. It was reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication. TC Sentinel uses AI writing tools in accordance with FTC guidelines.